DoE fights on for orchids

(CNS): According to the Department of Environment, it has not yet given up on the orchids which were seized in the Netherlands by Dutch customs earlier this year on their way to the Chelsea flower show in London. Despite recent rumours that the unique endemic blooms had found their way into the hands of private collectors, Mat Cottam from the DoE said that the orchids are still with the Dutch authorities and the DoE continues to negotiate for their release.

“Discussions are ongoing; however, the legal issues are complicated and will take some time to resolve,” said Cottam. “We are working together with Dutch authorities, DOT and DEFRA in the UK to seek a solution to the situation.”  He explained that this was a genuine red tape mistake and not an attempt to illegally transport endangered species. “We remain hopeful that the Dutch authorities will eventually see this and at the very least let the orchids go to Kew Gardens in London. We have a very robust MOU with Kew who would become the custodians of the plants but they would still belong to the Cayman Islands.”

The Dutch authorities responded to CNS equiries this week and confirmed that the flowers were still in their hands. CITES representative Henk Vonk said that they were in one of Holland’s botanical gardens. "Specialist men are taking care for the flowers," he said. "They are in good condition and one is flowering."

The eight Ghost and Banana orchids which embarked on the journey to Chelsea fell victim to the bureaucracy when one of the documents required under the Convention for the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) was overlooked. Andrew Guthrie, Director of the Queen Elizabeth Botanic Gardens, was the driving force behind the Heritage Garden, which went on to win a silver medal and proved a major attraction at the show. He explained how the paperwork came to be missing.

“Unfortunately, no one involved was aware that the EU had recently imposed further restrictions on CITES level IIplants, which required a CITES import permit from the destination country in addition to the CITES export permit,” he said. “This is strictly an EU rule, not an international CITES rule. The orchids had all the permits required from Cayman, but because we weren’t aware of this very recent requirement, they did not have a CITES import permit.”

He said that at some point the CITES management authority in the Netherlands would decide whether the plants are returned to the Cayman Islands or will remain in the Netherlands-designated CITES rescue site, but Guthrie agreed with Cottam that there was still a chance that the orchids would be allowed to go to Kew, where they were originally intended to go after the show, but the plants could not be sold.

Guthrie also noted that the concerns people had in Cayman that these flowers were exceptionally valuable and therefore vulnerable were misplaced. He explained that both of these endemic species of orchids have left the Cayman Islands in the past, and there are a number of commercial growers overseas who have had these plants, especially the Banana Orchid, for decades.

“The Banana Orchid is already in commercial production, people are selling it but no one is making a fortune off of them and no one ever will,” Guthrie noted. “In the ’60s, ’70s, and early ’80s certain orchid growers in Florida would come to the Cayman Islands, especially Cayman Brac, and collect massive quantities of these orchids to ship back and sell. They also paid people in the Brac very small sums of money for the orchids that they collected for them. So, worrying that these orchids might get out into commercial production is like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.”

Guthrie noted too that the missing orchids had no detrimental impact on Cayman’s exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show, which went on to win a medal. “We wanted to be able to point out a couple of our endemic plants for interest but they were not necessary for the exhibit as a whole,” he added.

Guthrie said the rumours that the plants were being sold for vast sums of money may have started as a result of an idea that a marketing company in the UK came up with to auction the plants off for the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, before it had established that this is not allowed with CITES plants. Guthrie added that Cayman’s achievement at the show was significant and the fact that the Cayman Islands’ very first Chelsea exhibit won a silver medal was, in the horticultural world, equivalent to winning a silver medal at the Olympics and far more important than the seizure of the orchids.